Category Archives: Fallout 3

“The Road” ahead

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If you’ve read up on Fallout 3 in the past few months, you probably already know that Cormac McCarthy’s bestseller, The Road, is a favorite amongst developers at the office and a source of inspiration for the game.

Way back in September, Pete shared news on the blog that Viggo (“For Frodo!!!”) Mortensen would be playing the role of the father in the movie. Since then, I hadn’t heard too much about the film’s production (which recently wrapped) until today when I noticed Ash posted about a New York Times article on his blog (which Mark Lampert posted about in our internal forums). Here’s a sample of the article, written by Charles McGrath:

“The Road” began filming in late February, mostly in and around Pittsburgh, with a later stop in New Orleans and a postproduction visit planned to Mount St. Helens. The producers chose Pennsylvania, one of them, Nick Wechsler, explained, because it’s one of the many states that give tax breaks and rebates to film companies and, not incidentally, because it offered such a pleasing array of post-apocalyptic scenery: deserted coalfields, run-down parts of Pittsburgh, windswept dunes. Chris Kennedy, the production designer, even discovered a burned-down amusement park in Lake Conneaut and an eight-mile stretch of abandoned freeway, complete with tunnel, ideal for filming the scene where the father and son who are the story’s main characters are stalked by a cannibalistic gang traveling by truck.

For those who can’t wait to see the film adaptation, there’s not much waiting left to do. The film is planned for a November release.

From the land down under

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Today on Gameplayer, Chris Stead has an 8-page preview with new impressions of Fallout 3 based on a recent meet up with Pete. Here’s a snippet of the preview:

The theme of Fallout 3 is Sacrifice and Survival. Or more to the point, what will you sacrifice to survive? The whole diverging paths and user-defined narratives that we have been experiencing in RPGs over recent years has become less of a gimmick and more of something truly emotional this generation. Who did you kill in Mass Effect, for example? Fallout 3 takes this feature and powers it with atomic energy. There is a full moral see-saw to ride in the game, referred to as karma. Various decisions you make in regards to completed and uncompleted quests, in combat and in conversation act to split your experience into multiple parallel universes.

Meanwhile, over at Gamespot’s Australian site, you can check out new impressions of the game, as well as an interview with Pete on their show Crosshairs. If you want to skip ahead to the Fallout 3 stuff, fast-forward to around the 11-minute mark of the video.

Update: Here’s two more Australian preview to check out — one from PALGN and another over at The Age.

Some tidbits from the latest PC Gamer

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This morning I read through the August issue of PC Gamer (US) and thought I’d share a few things that you might be interested in looking at.

  • In Desslock’s monthly column (page 96), he discusses how he’d like to see improvements within open world games and cites Oblivion as an example. In one example, he mentions he’d love to see the skeleton heads from Oblivion being used as bowling balls and rib cages used as xylophones. Yeah, I can’t argue that.
  • For you modders out there, Brett Todd’s featured column “Homebrew” focuses on rules modders should abide by. Check out his “Five Commandments” on page 98.
  • On the final page of the magazine, Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw discusses his experience playing Oblivion, and how he struggles sometimes with the concept of open-world games. If you haven’t seen it already, you can watch Yahtzee’s Zero Punctuation review of Oblivion here.
  • On the same page, there’s a blurb teasing that the next issue of PC Gamer (September 2008) will feature hands-on impressions of Fallout 3. A few weeks back, Senior Associate Editor Dan Stapleton came by the office to play the game. Here at the office, we’ll be just as interested as you guys to see what he thought.

If you’re a PC Gamer subscriber, the August issue of PC Gamer should be in your mailbox any day now.

Papercraft Vault Boy now online

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Back in April, we shared information about a papercraft cutout of Vault Boy available in the “How To” issue of PC Gamer. If you weren’t able to get your hands on a copy of the magazine, now’s your chance to get it online. The folks at GamesRadar have made it available on their website.

If you want to check out some of the other papercraft cutouts (Bioshock’s Big Daddy, the Weighted Companion Cube from Portal, and Half-Life’s Gordon Freeman), head here.

Fallout 3 homepage adds screenshots

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Over on the official Fallout 3 site, we’ve added 3 more screenshots for your viewing pleasure. The screen above shows a glimpse of your character moving through the wasteland with your canine companion, Dogmeat. The second image features a Super Mutant firing a minigun on the National Mall (you’ll notice the Capitol Building in the background). Lastly there’s a screen showing the Charisma pages from the children’s book, “You’re SPECIAL,” a book that helps you understand the core stats of your character (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility and Luck) early in the game.

To get a better look at these screenshots, head over to the official site.

Around the Web and on newsstands: New lists edition

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Today at the office, we received the 1,000th issue of Entertainment Weekly (since it’s a double issue, it’s actually issue #999-1,000). To celebrate the occasion, EW has a lengthy feature about the “New Classics” — where they list off the top 1,000 films, books, and albums of the last 25 years. While not as robust as some of the other lists, there’s also a list of the top 50 videogames from the past 25 years, with Oblivion making the list at #47.

For more news, hit the jump below…

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Rising Site

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In a continued effort to make our websites accessible to folks around the world, this week we launched the Japanese version of our official site.

As you may already know, ZeniMax Asia, is responsible for publishing/distributing Bethesda titles to Japan and other Asian territories — games like Fallout 3, Star Trek: Conquest and Star Trek: Legacy. ZeniMax Asia will also be publishing titles from other developers. As you’ll notice on the homepage, ZeniMax Asia is bringing Rockstar’s Bully to PS2 and Xbox 360.

For more details on ZeniMax Asia, check out the press release we put out back in April.

Around the web: Todd takes the Hot Seat

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Interviews with Todd continue to roll in. Here’s two more for you to check out.

At IGN, Todd sat in their “Hot Seat” to answer burning questions — both gaming and non-gaming related. Here’s a sample:

IGN: Does your work say anything about you?

Todd Howard: That I’ve never really grown out of my love of the 100 hour adventures of my Apple 2 days. The ones I would go to bed dreaming about solving. I crave moments of discovery in games, the moments of “can I do this?” and the sense that I have found something no other player has. I want my games to have that. I want length and depth and hint books that can kill a child if dropped on them.

More stuff after the jump…

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